Paradisi in sole paradisus terrestris, or, A garden of all sorts of pleasant flowers which our English ayre will permitt to be noursed vp / a kitchen garden of all manner of herbes, rootes & fruites for meate or sauce vsed with vs, and, an orchard of all sorte of fruitbearing trees and shrubbes fit for our land, together with the right orderinge, planting & preseruing of them and their vses & vertues

by John Parkinson

7. Keiri siue Leucoium maximum luteum flore pleno. The greatest double yellow Wall-flower.

This great double Wall-flower is as yet a stranger in England, and therefore what I here write is more vpon relation (which yet I beleeue to be most true) then vpon sight and speculation. The leaues of this Wall-flower are as greene and as large, if not larger then the great single kinde: the flowers also are of the same deepe gold yellow colour with it, but much larger then any of the former double kindes, and of as sweet a sent as any, which addeth delight vnto beauty.

The Place.

The first single kind is often found growing vpon old wals of Churches, and other houses in many places of England, and also among rubbish and stones. The single white and great yellow, as well as all the other double kindes, are noursed vp in Gardens onely with vs.

The Time.

All the single kindes doe flower many times in the end of Autumne, and if the Winter be milde all the Winter long, but especially in the moneths of February, March, and Aprill, and vntill the heate of the Spring doe spend them: but the other double kindes doe not continue flowring in that manner the yeare throughout, although very early sometimes, and very late also in some places.

The Names.

They are called by diuers names, as Viola lutea, Leucoium luteum, and Keiri, or Cheiri, by which name it is chiefly knowne in our Apothecaries shops, because there is an oyle made thereof called Cheirinum: In English they are vsually called in these parts, Wall-flowers: Others doe call them Bee-flowers; others Wall-Gilloflowers, Winter-Gilloflowers, and yellow Stocke-Gilloflowers; but we haue a kinde of Stocke-Gilloflower that more fitly deserueth that name, as shall be shewed in the [Chapter following].

The Vertues.

The sweetnesse of the flowers causeth them to be generally vsed in Nosegayes, and to decke vp houses; but physically they are vsed in diuers manners: As a Conserue made of the flowers, is vsed for a remedy both for the Appoplexie and Palsie. The distilled water helpeth well in the like manner. The oyle made of the flowers is heating and resoluing, good to ease paines of strained and pained sinewes.